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RALPH WALDO EMERSON 




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RALPH WALDO EMERSON 






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HENRY ALTEMUS 



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Copyrighted, 1896, by Henry Altkmus. 



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HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER, 
PHILADBLPHIA. 



INTELLECT. 



'-VERY substance is negatively electric to that 
h stands above it in the chemical tables, posi- 
y to that which stands below it. Water dis- 
3S wood and stone, and salt; air dissolves 
iv; electric fire dissolves air, but the intellect 
)lves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the sub- 
unnamed relations of nature in its resistless 
Vtruum. Intellect lies behind genius, which 
itellect constructive. Intellect is the simple 
er anterior to all action or construction, 
dly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural 
ory of the intellect, but what man has yet been 
to mark the steps and boundaries of that 
sparent essence ? The first questions are al- 
s to be asked, and the wisest doctor is grav- 
id by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can 
speak of the action of the mind under any di- 
'ons, as, of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its 
rks, and so forth, since it melts will into per- 
ption, knowledge into act? Each becomes 
le other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like 
le vision of the eye, but is union with the things 
.10 wn. 

(3) 



4 INTELLECT. 

Intellect and intellection signify, to the com- 
mon ear, consideration of abstract truth. The 
consideration of time and place, of you and me, 
of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most men's 
minds. Intellect separates the fact considered 
from you^ from all local and personal reference, 
and discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. 
Heraclitus looked upon the affections as dense and 
colored mists. In the fog of good and evil affec- 
tions, it is hard for man to walk forward in a 
straight line. Intellect is void of affection, and 
sees an object as it stands in the light of science, 
cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of 
the individual, floats over its own personality, and 
regards it as a fact, and not as i and mine. He 
who is immersed in wluit concerns person or place, 
cannot see the problem of existence. This the 
intellect always ponders. Nature shows all things 
formed and bound. The intellect pierces the 
form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness 
between remote things, and reduces all things into 
a few principles. 

The making a fact the subject of thought, 
raises it. All that mass of mental and moral phe- 
nomena which we do not make objects of voluntary 
thought, come within the power of fortune; they 
constitute the circumstance of daily life ; they are 
subject to change, to fear, and hope. Every man 
beholds his human condition with a degree of 
melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by 
the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies 
open to the mercy of coming events. But a 



INTELLECT. 5 

truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a 
subject of destiny. We behold it as a god up- 
raised above care and fear. And so any fact in 
our life, or any record of our fancies or reflec- 
tions, disentangled from the web of our uncon- 
sciousness, becomes an object impersonal and im- 
mortal. It is the past restored, but embalmed. 
A better art than that of Egypt has taken fear 
and corruption out of it. It is eviscerated of care. 
It is offered for science. What is addressed to us 
for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes 
us intellectual beings. 

The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in 
every step. The mind that grows could not pre- 
dict the times, the means, the mode of that spon- 
taneity. God enters by a private door into every 
individual. Long prior to the age of reflection, is 
the thinking of the mind. Out of darkness, it came 
insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. 
Over it always reigned a firm law. In the period 
of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impres- 
sions from the surrounding creation after its own 
way. Whatever any mind doth or saith, is after 
a law. It has no random act or word. And this 
native law remains over it after it has come to re- 
flection or conscious thought. In the most worn, 
pedantic, introverted, self-tormentor's life, the 
greatest part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, un- 
imaginable, and must be, until he can take him- 
self up by his own ears. What am I ? What has 
my will done to make me that I am ? Nothing. 
I have been floated into this thought, this hour, 



6 INTELLECT. 

this connection of events, by might and mind 
sublime, and my ingenuity and wilfulness have not 
thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree. 

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You 
cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, 
come so close to any question as your spontaneous 
glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from 3^our 
bed, or walk abroad in the morning after medita- 
ting the matter before sleep, on the previous 
night. Always our thinking is a pious reception. 
Out truth of thought is therefore vitiated as much 
by too violent direction given by our will, as by 
too great negligence. We do not determine what 
we will think. We only open our senses, clear 
away, as we can, all obstruction from the fact, and 
suffer the intellect to see. We have little control 
over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. 
They catch us up for moments into their heaven, 
and so fully engage us, that we take no thought 
for the morrow, gaze like children, without an 
effort to make them our own. By-and-by we fall 
out of that rapture, bethink us where we have 
been, what we have seen, and repeat, as truly as 
we can, what we have beheld. As far as we can 
recall these ecstasies, we carry away in the inef- 
faceable memory, the result, and all men and all 
the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. But the 
moment we cease to report, and attempt to correct 
and contrive, it is not truth. 

If we consider what persons have stimulated 
and profited us, we shall perceive the superiority 
of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over the 



INTELLECT. 1 

arithmetical or logical. The first always contains 
the second, but virtual and latent. We want, in 
every man, a long logic ; we cannot pardon the 
absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic 
is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the 
intuition ; but its virtue is as silent method ; the 
moment it would appear as propositions, and have 
a separate value, it is worthless. 

In every man's mind, some images, words, and 
facts remain, without effort on his part to imprint 
them, which others forget, and afterwards these 
illustrate to him important laws. All our prog- 
ress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You 
have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a 
knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. 
Trust the instinct to the end, though you can ren- 
der no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trust- 
ing it to the end, it shall ripen into truth, and you 
shall know why you believe. 

Each mind has its own method. A true man 
never acquires after college rules. What you have 
aggregated in a natural manner, surprises and de- 
lights when it is produced. For we cannot over- 
see each other's secret. And hence the differences 
between men in natural endowment are insignifi- 
cant in comparison with their common wealth. 
Do you think the porter and the cook have no an- 
ecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you? 
Everybody knows as much as the savant. The 
walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with 
facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a 
lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in 

19 



^ INTELLECT. 

the degree in which he has wit and culture, finds 
his curiosity inflamed concerning the modes of 
living and thinking of other men, and especially 
of those classes whose minds have not been sub- 
dued by the drill of school education. 

This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy 
mind, but becomes richer and more frequent in its 
informations through all states of culture. At 
last comes the era of reflection, when we not onlj^ 
observe, but take pains to observe ; when we of 
set purpose, sit down to consider an abstract 
truth; when we keep the mind's eye open, whilst 
we converse, whilst we read, whilst we act, intent 
to learn the secret law of some class of facts. 

What is the hardest task in the world ? To 
think. I would put myself in the attitude to 
look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. 
I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. 
I seem to know what he meant, who said. No man 
can see God face to face and live. For example, 
a man explores the basis of civil government. Let 
him intend his mind without respite, without rest, 
in one direction. His best heed long time avails 
him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. 
We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the 
truth. We say, I will walk abroad, and the truth 
will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, 
but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only 
the stillness and composed attitude of the library, 
to seize the thought. But we come in, and are 
as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, 
and unannounced, the truth appears. A certain, 



INTELLECT. 9 

wandering light appears, and is the distinction, 
the principle we wanted. But the oracle comes, 
because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. 
It seems as if the law of the intellect resen:jbled 
that law of nature by which we now inspire, now 
expire the breath ; by which the heart now draws 
in, then hurls out the blood, — the law of undula- 
tion. So now you must labor with your brains, 
and now you must forbear your activity, and see 
what the great Soul showeth. 

Our intellections are mainly prospective. The 
immortality of man is as legitimately preached 
from the intellections as from the moral volitions. 
Every intellection is mainly prospective. Its 
present value is its least. It is a little seed. In- 
spect what delights you in Plutarch, in Shakes- 
peare, in Cervantes. Each truth that a writer ac- 
quires, is a lantern which he instantly turns full 
on what facts and thoughts lay already in his 
mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which 
had littered his garret, become precious. Every 
trivial fact in his private biography becomes an il- 
lustration of this new principle, revisits the day, 
and delights all men by its piquancy and new 
charm. Men say, where did he get this? and think 
there was something divine in his life. But no ; 
they have myriads of facts just as good, would 
they only get a lamp to ransack their attic withal. 

We are all wise. The difference between per- 
sons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an 
academical club, a person who always deferred to 
me, who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that 



lo INTELLECT. 

ray experiences had somewhat superior ; whilst T 
saw that his experiences were as good as mine. 
Give them to me, and I w^ould make the same use 
of them. He held the old ; he holds the new ; I 
had the habit of tacking together the old and the 
new, which he did not use to exercise. This may 
hold in the great examples. Perhaps if we should 
meet Shakespeare, we should not be conscious of 
any steep inferiority ; no, but of a great equality, 
— only that he possessed a strange skill of using, 
of classifying his facts, which we lack. For, not- 
withstanding our utter incapacity to produce any- 
thing like Hamlet and Othello, see the perfect 
reception this wit, and immense knowledge of life 
and liquid eloquence find in us all. 

If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make 
hay, or hoe corn, and then retire within doors, and 
shut your eyes, and press them with your hand, you 
shall still see apples hanging in the bright light, 
with boughs and leaves thereto, or the tasselled 
grass, or the corn-flags, and this for five or six hours 
afterwards. There lie the impressions on the reten- 
tive organ, though you knew it not. So lies the 
whole series of natural images with which your life 
has made you acquainted, in 3'our memory, though 
you know it not, and a thrill of passion flashes light 
on their dark chamber, and tlie active power seizes 
instantly the fit image, as the word of its moment- 
ary thought. 

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Oar 
history, we are sure, is quite tame. We have 
nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser 



INTELLECT. i r 

years still run back to the despised recollections of 
childhood, and always we are fishing np some won- 
derful article out of that pond ; until, bj^-and-b}', 
we begin to suspect that the biography of the one 
foolish person we know, is, in reality, nothing less 
than the miniature paraphrase of tlie hundred vol- 
umes of the Universal History. 

In the intellect constructive, which we popu- 
larly designate by the word Genius, we observe 
the same balance of two elements, as in intellect 
receptive. The constructive intellect produces 
thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, sys- 
tems. It is the generation of the mind, the mar- 
riage of thought with nature. To genius must 
always go two gifts, the thought and the publica- 
tion. The first is revelation, alwaj^s a miracle, 
which no frequency of occurrence, or incessant 
study can ever familiarize, but which must always 
leave the inquirer stupid v/ith wonder. It is the 
advent of truth into the world, a form of thought 
now, for the first time, bursting into the universe, 
a child of the old eternal soul, a piece of genuine 
and immeasurable greatness. It seems, for the 
time, to inherit all that has yet existed, and to 
dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought 
of man, and goes to fashion every institution. 
But to make it available, it needs a vehicle or art by 
which it is conveyed to men. To be communica- 
ble, it must become picture or sensible object. 
We must learn the language of facts. The most 
wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he 
has no hand to paint them to the senses. The ray 



12 INTELLECT. 

of light passes invisible through space, and only 
when it falls on an object is it seen. When the 
spiritual energy is directed on something outward, 
then is it a thought. The relation between it 
and you, first makes you, the value of you, ap- 
parent to me. The rich, inventive genius of the 
painter must be smothered and lost for want cf 
the power of drawing, and in our happy hours, we 
should be inexhaustible poets, if once we could 
break through the silence into adequate rhyme. 
As all men have some access to primary truth, 
so all have some art or pov/er of communication 
in their head, but only in the artist does it descend 
into the hand. There is an inequality whose laws 
we do not yet know, between two men and be- 
tween two moments of the same man, in respect 
to this faculty. In common hours, we have the 
same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but 
they do not sit for their portraits, they are not de- 
tached, but lie in a web. The thought of genius 
is spontaneous ; but the power of picture or ex- 
pression, in the most enriched and flowing nature, 
implies a mixture of will, a certain control over the 
spontaneous states, without which no production is 
possible. It is a conversion of all nature into the 
rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judgment, 
with a strenuous exercise of choice. And yet the 
imaginative vocabulary seems to be spontaneous 
also. It does not flow from experience only or 
mainly, but from a richer source. Not by any 
conscious imitation of particular forms are the 
grand strokes of the painter executed, but by re- 



INTELLECT. 13 

pairing to the fountain-head of all forms in his 
mind. Who is the first drawing-master ? With- 
out instruction we know very well the ideal of 
the human form. A child knows if an arm or a 
leg be distorted in a picture, if the attitude be 
natural, or grand, or mean, though he has never 
received any instruction in drawing, or heard any 
conversation on the subject, nor can liimself draw 
with correctness a single feature. A good form 
strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have 
any science on the subject, and a beautiful face 
sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all con- 
sideration of the mechanical proportions of the 
features and head. We may owe to dreams some 
light on the fountain of this skill ; for, as soon as 
we let our will go, and let the unconscious states 
ensue, see what cunning draughtsmen we are ! 
We entertain ourselves with wonderful forms of 
men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of Avoods, 
and of monsters, and the mystic pencil Avhere- 
with we then draw, has no awkwardness, or inex- 
perience, no meagreness or poverty; it can design 
well, and group well ; its composition is full of 
art, its colors are well laid on, and the whole canvas 
which it paints, is life-like, and apt to touch us 
with terror, with tenderness, with desire, and with 
grief. Neitlier are the artist's copies from experi- 
ence, ever mere copies, but always touched and 
softened by tints from this ideal domain. 

The conditions essential to a constructive mind, 
do not appear to be so often combined but that a 
good sentence or verse remains fresh and memor- 



14 INTELLECT, 

able for a long time. Yet when we write with 
ease, and come out into the free air of thought, we 
seem to be assured that nothing is easier than to 
continue this communication at pleasure. Up, 
down, around, the kingdom of thought has no en- 
closures, but the Muse makes us free of her cit}^ 
Well, the Avorld has a million writers. One would 
think, then, that good thought would be as famil- 
iar as air and water, and the gifts of each new 
hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count 
all our good books ; nay, I remember any beauti- 
ful verse for twenty years. It is true that the 
discerning intellect of the world is always greatly 
in advance of the creative, so that always there 
are many competent judges of the best book, and 
few writers of the best books. But some of the 
conditions of intellectual construction are of rare 
occurrence. The intellect is a whole, and de- 
mands integrity in every work. This is resisted 
equally by a man's devotion to a single thought, 
and by his ambition to combine too many. 

Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten 
his attention on a single aspect of truth, and ap- 
ply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth 
becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood ; 
herein resembling the air, which is our natural 
element, and the breath of our nostrils, but if a 
stream of the same be directed on tlie body for a 
time, it causes cold, fever, and even death. How 
wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the 
})olitical or religious fanatic, or indeed any pos- 
sessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exag- 



INTELLECT, 15 

geration of a single topic. It is incipient insanity. 
Every thought is a prison also. I cannot see what 
you see, because I am caught up by a strong wind 
and blown so far in one direction, that I am out 
of the hoop of your horizon. 

Is it any better, if the student, to avoid this 
offence, and to liberalize himself, aims to make a 
mechanical whole, of history, or science, or phil- 
osophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts 
that fall within his vision? The world refuses to 
be analyzed by addition and subtraction. When 
we are young, we spend much time and pains in 
filling our note-books with all definitions of Re- 
ligion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope 
that in the course of a few years, we shall have 
condensed into our encyclopedia, the net value of 
all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. 
But year after year our tables get no complete- 
ness, and at last we discover tliat our curve is a 
parabola, whose arcs will never meet. 

Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, 
is the integrity of the intellect transmitted to its 
works, but by a vigilance which brings the intel- 
lect in its greatness and best state to operate every 
moment. It must have the same wholeness which 
nature has. Although no diligence can rebuild 
the universe in a model, by the best accumulation 
or disposition of details, yet does the world reap- 
pear in miniature in every event, so that all the 
laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. 
The intellect must have the like perfection in its 
apprehension, and in its works. For this reason, 



i6 INTELLECT. 

an index or mercury of intellectual proficiency is 
the perception of identity. We talk with accom- 
plished persons Avho appear to be strangers in na- 
ture. The cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird are 
not theirs, have nothing of them : the world is 
only their lodging and table. But the poet, whose 
verses are to be spheral and complete, is one 
whom nature cannot deceive, whatsoever face of 
strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict 
consanguinity, and detects more likeness than 
variety in all her changes. We are stung by the 
desire for new thought, but when we receive a 
new thought, it is only the old thought with a 
new face, and though we make it our own, we in- 
stantly crave another ; we are not really enriched. 
For the truth was in us, before it was reflected to 
us from natural objects; and the profound genius 
wdll cast the likeness of all creatures into every 
product of his wit. 

But if the constructive powers are rare, and it 
is given to few men to be poets, yet every man is 
a receiver of this descending holy ghost, and may 
well study the laws of its influx. Exactly paral- 
lel is the whole rule of intellectual duty, to the 
rule of moral duty. A self-denial, no less austere 
than the saint's, is demanded of the scholar. He 
must worship truth, and forego all things for that, 
and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure 
in thought is thereby augmented. 

God offers to every mind its choice between 
truth and repose. Take which you please, — you 
can never have both. Between these, as a pen- 



INTELLECT. 17 

diilum, man oscillates ever. He in whom tlie 
love of repose predominates, will accept the first 
creed, the first philosophy, the first political party 
he meets, — most likely, his father's. He gets rest, 
commodity, and reputation ; but he shuts the door 
of truth. He in whom the love of truth p/redom- 
inates, will keep himself aloof from all moorings 
and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and 
recognize all the opposite negations between 
which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits 
to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect 
opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the 
other is not, and respects the highest law of his 
being. 

The circle of the green earth he must measure 
with his shoes, to find the man who can yield him 
truth. He shall then know that there is some- 
what more blessed and great in hearing than in 
speaking. Happy is the hearing man: unhappy 
the speaking man. As long as I hear truth, I am 
bathed by a beautiful element, and am not con- 
scious of any limits to my nature. The sugges^ 
tions are thousandfold that I hear and see. The 
waters of the great deep have ingress and 
egress to the soul. But if I speak, I define, I 
confine, and am less. When Socrates speaks, 
Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no shame 
that they do not speak. They also are good. He 
likewise defers to them, loves them, whilst he 
speaks. Because a true and natural man contains 
and is the same truth which an eloquent man ar- 
ticulates : but in the eloquent man, because he 



i8 INTELLECT. 

can articulate it, it seems something the less to 
reside, and he turns to these silent beautiful with 
the more inclination and respect. The ancient 
sentence said, Let us be silent, for so are the gods. 
Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and 
gives us leave to be great and universal. Every 
man's progress is through a succession of teachers, 
each of whom seems at the time to have a super- 
lative influence, but it at last gives place to a new. 
Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus says, Leave 
father, mother, house and lands, and follow me. 
Who leaves all, receives more. This is as true 
intellectually, as morally. Each new mind we 
approach, seems to require an abdication of all our 
past and present possessions. A new doctrine 
seems, at first, a subversion of all our opinions, 
tastes, and manner of living. Such has Sweden- 
borg, such has Kant, such has Coleridge, such has 
Cousin seemed to many young men in this coun- 
try. Take thankfully and heartily all they can 
give. Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them 
not go until their blessing be won, and after a 
short season, the dismay v/ill be overpast, the ex- 
cess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no 
longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright 
star shining serenely in your heaven, and blend- 
ing its light with all your day. 

But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to 
that which draws him, because that is his own, he 
is to refuse himself to that which draws him not, 
whatsoever fame and authority may attend it, be- 
cause it is not his own. Entire self-reliance belongs 



INTELLECT. 19 

to the inteliect. One soul is a counterpoise of all 
souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance 
for the sea. It must treat things, and books, and 
sovereign genius, as itself also a sovereign. If 
JEschylus be that man he is taken for, he has not 
yet done his office, when he has educated the 
learned of Europe for a thousand years. He is now 
to approve himself a master of delight to me also. 
If he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him 
nothing with me. I were a fool not to sacrifice a 
thousand JEschyluses to my intellectual integrity. 
Especially take the same ground in regard to ab- 
stract truth, the science of the mind. The Bacon, 
the Spinoza, the Hume, Schelling, Kant, or who- 
soever propounds to you a philosophy of the mind, 
is only a more or less awkward translator of things 
in your consciousness, which you have also your 
way of seeing, perhaps of denominating. Say 
then, instead of too timidly poring into his obscure 
sense, that he has not succeeded in rendering back 
to you your consciousness. He has not succeeded ; 
now let another try. If Plato cannot, perhaps 
Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot, then perhaps 
Kant. Anyhovk^, when at last it is done, you will 
find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, com- 
mon state, which the writer restores to you. 

But let us end these didactics. I will not, 
though the subject might provoke it, speak to the 
open question between Truth and Love. I shall 
not presume to interfere in the old politics of the 
skies ; " The cherubim know most ; the seraphim 
love most." The gods shall settle their own quar- 



20 INTELLECT. 

rels. But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws 
of the intellect, without remembering that lofty 
and sequestered class of men who have been its 
prophets and oracles, the high priesthood of the 
pure reason, the Trismegisti^fhQ expounders of the 
principles of thought from age to age. When at 
long intervals, we turn over their abstruse pages, 
wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these 
few, these great spiritual lords, who have walked 
in the world, — these of the old religion, — dwelling 
in a worship which makes the sanctities of Christi- 
anity look par venues and popular ; for "persuasion 
is in soul, but necessity is in intellect." This 
band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, 
Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius, 
and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, 
so primary in their thinking, that it seems antece- 
dent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric 
and literature, and to be at once poetry, and 
music, and dancing, and astronomy, and mathe- 
matics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of 
the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the 
soul lays the foundations of nature. The truth 
and grandeur of their thought is proved by its 
scope and applicability, for it commands the entire 
schedule and inventory of things, for its illustra- 
tion. But what marks its elevation, and has even 
a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with 
which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, 
and from ago to age prattle to each other, and to 
no contemporary. Well assured that their speech 
is intelligible, and the most natural thing in the 



INTELLECT. 



21 



world, they add thesis to thesis, without a mo- 
ment's heed of the universal astonishment of the 
human race below, who do not comprehend their 
plainest argument ; nor do they ever relent so 
much as to insert a popular or explaining sen- 
tence ; nor testify the least displeasure or petu- 
lance at the dullness of their amazed auditory. 
The angels are so enamored of the language that 
is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort tlieir 
lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of 
men, but speak their own, whether there be any 
who understand it or not. 



PRUDENCE. 



PRUDENCE. 



What right have I to write on Prudence, 
whereof I have little, and that of the negative 
sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and 
going without, not in the inventing of means 
and methods, not in adroit steering, not in gen- 
tle repairing. I have no skill to make money 
spend well, no genius in my economy, and who- 
ever sees my garden, discovers that I must have 
some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate 
lubricity, and people without perception. Then 
I have the same title to write on prndence, that I 
have to write on poetry or holiness. We write 
from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from 
experience. We paint those qualities which we 
do not possess. The poet admires the man of 
energy and tactics ; the merchant breeds his son 
for the church or the bar : and where a man is 
not vain and egotistic, you shall find what he has 
not, by his praise. Moreover, it would be hardly 
honest in me not to balance these fine lyric words 
of Love and Friendship with words of coarser 
sound, and whilst my debt to my senses is real and 
constant, not to own it in passing. 

(25) 



26 PRUDENCE. 

Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the 
science of appearances. It is the outmost action 
of the inward life. It is God taking thought for 
oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. 
It is content to seek health of body by complying 
with physical conditions, and health of mind by 
the laws of the intellect. 

The world of the senses is a world of shows ; 
it does not exist for itself, but has a symbolic 
character ; and a true prudence or law of shows, 
recognises the co-presence of other laws ; and 
knows that its own office is subaltern ; knows 
that it is surface and not centre where it works. 
Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate 
when it is the Natural History of the soul incar- 
nate ; when it unfolds the beauty of laws within 
the narrow scope of the senses. 

There are all degrees of proficiency in knowl- 
edge of the world. It is sufficient, to our present 
purpose, to indicate three. One class lives to the 
utility of the symbol ; esteeming health and 
wealth a final good. Another class live above 
this mark to the beauty of the symbol ; as the 
poet, and artist, and the naturalist, and man of 
science. A third class live above the beauty of 
the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified ; 
these are wise men. The first class have common 
sense ; the second, taste ; and the third, spiritual 
perception. Once in a long time, a man traverses 
the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol 
solidly ; then also has a clear eye for its beauty, 
and, lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred 



PRUDENCE. 27 

volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build 
houses and barns thereon, reverencing the 
splendor of the God which he sees bursting 
through each chink and cranny. 

The world is filled with the proverbs and acts 
and winkings of a base prudence, which is a de- 
votion to matter as if we possessed no other fac- 
ulties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye 
and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of 
Three, which never subscribes, which gives never, 
which lends seldom, and asks but one question of 
any project — Will it bake bread ? This is a dis- 
ease like a thickening of the skin until the vital 
organs are destroyed. But culture, revealing the 
high origin of the apparent world, and aiming at 
the perfection of the man as the end, degrades 
everything else, as health and bodily life, into 
means. It sees prudence not to be a several fac- 
ulty, but a name for wisdom and virtue convers- 
ing with the body and its wants. Cultivated men 
always feel and speak so, as if a great fortune, 
the achievement of a civil or social measure, great 
personal influence, a graceful and commanding 
address had their value as proofs of the energy of 
the spirit. If a man lose his balance, and im- 
merse himself in any trades or pleasures for their 
own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he 
is not a cultivated man. 

The spurious prudence, making the senses final, 
is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject 
of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore 
literature's. The true prudence limits this sensu- 



28 PRUDENCE. 

alisra by admitting the knowledge of an internal 
and real world. This recognition once made, — 
the order of the world and the distribution of af- 
fairs and times being studied with the co-percep- 
tion of their subordinate place, will reward any 
degree of attention. For, our existence thus ap- 
parently attached in nature to the sun and the re- 
turning moon and the periods which they mark ; 
so susceptible to climate and to country, so alive 
to social good and evil, so fond of splendor, and 
so tender to hunger and cold and debt, — reads all 
its primary lessons out of these books. 

Prudence does not go behind nature, and ask, 
whence it is? It takes the laws of the world 
whereby man's being is conditioned, as they are, 
and kee]3s these laws, that it may enjoy their 
proper good. It respects space and time, climate, 
want, sleep, the law of polarity, growth and death. 
There revolve to give bound and period to his 
being, on all sides, the sun and moon, the great 
formalists in the sky ; here lies stubborn matter, 
and will not swerve from its chemical routine. 
Here is a planted globe, pierced and belted with 
natural laws, and fenced and distributed externally 
with civil partitions and properties which impose 
new restraints on the young inhabitant. 

We eat of the bread wliich grows in the field. 
We live by the air which blows around us, and we 
are poisoned by the air that is too cold or too hot, 
too dry or too wet. Time, which shows so va- 
cant, indivisible and divine in its coming, is slit 
and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to 



PRUDENCE. 29 

be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, 
or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I 
have a headache ; then the tax ; and an affair to 
be transacted with a man without heart or brains ; 
and the stinging recollection of an injurious or 
very awkward word, — these eat up the hours. Do 
what we can, summer will have its flies. If we 
walk in the woods, we must feed musquitoes. If 
we go a fishing, we must expect a wet coat. Then 
climate is agieat impediment to idle persons. We 
often resolve to give up the care of the weather, 
but still we regard the clouds and the rain. 

We are instructed by these petty experiences 
which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil 
and four months of snow make the inhabitant of 
the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than 
his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the trop- 
ics. The islander may ramble all day at will. 
At night, he may sleep on a mat under the moon, 
and wherever a wild date-tree grows, nature has, 
without a prayer even, spread a table for his 
morning meal. The northerner is perforce a 
householder. He must brew, bake, salt and pre- 
serve his food. He must pile wood and coal. But 
as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to, 
without some new acquaintance with nature ; and 
as nature is inexhaustibly significant, the inhabit- 
ants of these climates have always excelled the 
southerner in force. Such is the value of these 
matters, that a man who know;s other things, can 
never know too much of these. Let him have 
accurate perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, 



30 PRUDENCE. 

handle ; if eyes, measure and discriminate \ let 
him accept and hive every fact of chemistry, 
natural history, and economics ; the more he has, 
the less is he willing to spare any one. Time is 
always bringing the occasions that disclose their 
value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural 
and innocent action. The domestic man, who 
loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and 
the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn 
on the hearth, has solaces which others never 
dream of. The application of means to ends, en- 
sures victory and the songs of victory not less in 
a farm or a shop, than in the tactics of party, or 
of war. The good husband finds method as ef- 
ficient in the packing of fire-Avood in a shed, or in 
the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in Penin- 
sular campaigns or the files of the Department of 
State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, 
or gets his tool-box set in the corner of the barn- 
chamber, and stored witli nails, gimlet, pincers, 
screwdriver, and chisel. Herein he tastes an old 
joy of youth and childhood, the cat-like love of 
garrets, presses, and corn-chambers, and of the 
conveniences of long housekeeping. His garden 
or his poultry-yard, — very paltry places, it may 
be, — tell him many pleasant anecdotes. One 
might find argument for optimism, in the abund- 
ant flow of this saccharine element of pleasure, 
in every suburb and extremity of the good world. 
Let a man keep the law, — any law, — and his way 
will be strewn with satisfactions. There is more 



PRUDENCE. 31 

difference in the quality of our pleasures than in 
the amount. 

On tlie other hand, nature punishes any neglect 
of prudence. If you think the senses final, obey 
their law. If you believe in the soul, do not 
clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on 
the slow tree of cause and effect. It is vinegar 
to the eyes, to deal with men of loose and imper- 
fect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have 
said, "If the child says he looked out of this 
window when he looked out of that, — whip him." 
Our American character is marked by a more 
than average delight in accurate perception, which 
is shown by the currency of the by-word, "No 
mistake." But the discomfort of unpunctuality, 
of confusion of thought about facts, of inatten- 
tion to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. 
The beautiful laws of time and space once dislo- 
cated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If 
the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, 
instead of honey, it will yield us bees. Our 
words and actions to be fair, must be timel}*. A 
gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the 
scythe in the mornings of June ; yet what is more 
lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone 
or mower's rifle, when it is too late in the season 
to make hay? Scatter-brained and "afternoon 
men " spoil much more than their own affair, in 
spoiling the temper of those who deal with them. 
1 have seen a criticism on some paintings, of 
which I am reminded, when I see the shiftless and 
unhappy men who are not true to their senses. 



32 PRUDENCE. 

The last Grand Duke of Weimar, a man of su- 
perior understanding, said : " I have sometimes 
remarked in the presence of great works of art, 
and just now especially, in Dresden, how much a 
certain property contributes to the effect which 
gives life to the figures, and to the life an irresist- 
ible truth. This property is the hitting, in all the 
figures we draw, the right centre of gravity. I 
mean, the placing the figures firm upon their feet, 
making the hands grasp, and fastening the eyes 
on the spot where they should look. Even life- 
less figures, as vessels and stools, — let them be 
drawn ever so correctly, — lose all effect so soon 
as ^hey lack the resting upon their centre of grav- 
ity, and have a certain swimming and oscillating 
appearance. The Raphael, in the Dresden gal'ery, 
(the only greatly affecting picture which I have 
seen,) is the quietest and most passionless piece 
you can imagine ; a couple of saints who worship 1 
the Virgin and child. Nevertheless, it awakens a" 
deeper impression than the contortions of ten 
crucified martyrs. For, beside all the resistless 
beauty of form, it possesses in the highest degree 
the property of the perpendicularity of all thei 
figures." — This perpendicularity we demand of ■ 
all the figures in this picture of life. Let them 
stand on their feet, and not float and swing. Let 
us know where to find them. Let them discrim- 
inate between what they remember, and what;| 
they dreamed. Let them call a spade a spade, i 
Let them give us facts, and honor their own 
senses with trust. 



PRUDENCE. 33 

But what man shall dare tax another with im- 
prudence ? Who is prudent ? The men we call 
greatest are least in this kingdom. There is a cer- 
tain fatal dislocation in our relation to nature, dis- 
torting all our modes of living, and making every 
law our enemy, which seems at last to have 
aroused all the wit and virtue in the world to pon- 
der the question of Reform. 'We must call the 
highest prudence to counsel, and ask why liealth 
and beauty and genius should now be the excep- 
tion, rather than the rule of human nature ? We 
do not know the properties of plants and animals 
and the laws of nature through our sympathy with 
the same, but this remains the dream of poets. 
Poetry and prudence should be coincident. Poets 
should be lawgivers ; that is, the boldest lyric in- 
spiration should not chide and insult, but should 
announce and lead the civil code, and the day's 
work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably 
parted. We have violated law upon law, until 
we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we 
espy a coincidence between reason and the phe- 
nomena, we are surprised. Beauty should be the 
dowry of every man and woman, as invariably as 
sensation ; but it is rare. Health or sound organ- 
ization should be universal. Genius should be the 
child of genius, and every child should be in- 
spired ; but now it is not to be predicted of any 
child, and nowhere is it pure. We call partial 
half-lights, " courtesy, genius ; talent which con- 
verts itself to money, talent which glitters to-day, 
that it may dine and sleep well to-morrow ; and 



34 PRUDENCE. 

society is officered by men of parts, as they are 
properly called, and not by divine men. These 
use their gifts to refine luxury, not to abolish it. 
Genius is always ascetic; and piety and love. 
Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and 
they find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it. 
We have found out fine names to cover our sen- 
suality withal, but no gifts can raise intemper- 
ance. The man of talent affects to call his trans- 
gressions of the laws of the senses trivial, and to 
count them nothing considered with his devotion 
to his art. His art rebukes him. That never 
taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor 
tlie wish to reap where he had not sowed. His 
art is less for every deduction from his holiness, 
and less for every defect of common sense. On 
him who scorned the world, as he said, the scorned 
world wreaks its revenge. He that despiseth small 
things, will perish by little and little. Goethe's 
Tasso is very likely to be a pretty fair historical 
portrait, and that is true tragedy. It does not 
seem to me so genuine grief w^hen some tyrannous 
Richard HI. oppresses and slays a score of inno- 
cent persons, as w^hen Antonio and Tasso, both 
apparently right, wrong each other. One living 
after the maxims of this world, and consistent and 
true to them, the other fired with all divine sen- 
timents, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, 
without submitting to their law\ That is a grief 
we all feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is no 
infrequent case in modern biography. A man of 
genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of 



t 



PRUDENCE, 35 

physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently 
unfortunate, querulous, a '' discomfortable cousin," 
a thorn to himself and to others. 

The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst 
something higher than prudence is active, he is 
admirable ; when common sense is wanted, he is 
an incumbrance. Yesterday, Csesar was not so 
great ; to-day, Job not so miserable. Yesterday, 
radiant with the light of an ideal world, in which 
he lives, the first of men, and now oppressed by 
wants, and by sickness, for which he must thank 
himself, none is so poor to do him reverence. He 
resembles the opium eaters, whom travelers de- 
scribe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantino- 
ple, who skulk about all day, the most pitiful 
drivellers, yellow, emaciated, ragged, and sneak- 
ing ; then, at evening, when the bazaars are open, 
they slink to the opium shop, swallow their mor- 
sel, and become tranquil, glorious, and great. 
And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent 
genius, struggling for years with paltry pecuniary 
difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted, and 
fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins ? 

Is it not better that a man should accept the 
first pains and mortifications of this sort, which 
nature is not slack in sending him, as liints that 
he must expect no other good than the just fruit 
of his own labor and self-denial ? Health, bread, 
climate, social position, have their importance, 
and he will give them their due. Let him esteem 
Nature a perpetual counsellor, and her perfections 
the exact measure of our deviations. Let him 



36 PRUDENCE. 

make the night, night, and the day, day. Let him 
control the habit of expense. Let him see that as 
much wisdom may be expended on a private econ- 
omy, as on an empire, and as much wisdom may 
be drawn from it. The laws of the world are 
written out for him on every piece of money in 
his hand. There is nothing he will not be the bet- 
ter for knowing, were it only the wisdom of Poor 
Richard ; or the State-street prudence of buying 
by the acre, to sell by the foot ; or the thrift of the 
agriculturist, to stick a tree between whiles, be- 
cause it will grow whilst he sleeps ; or the pru- 
dence which consists in husbanding little strokes 
of the tool, little portions of time, particles of 
stock, and small gains. The eye of prudence may 
never shut. L'on, if kept at the ironmonger's, will 
rust. Beer, if not brewed in the right state of 
the atmosphere, will sour. Timber of ships will 
rot at sea, or, if laid up high and dry, will strain, 
warp, and dry-rot. Money, if kept by us, yields ■ 
no rent, and is liable to loss ; if invested, is liable I 
to depreciation of the particular kind of stock. 
Strike, says the smith, the iron is white. Keep 
the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as 
you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yan- 
kee trade is reputed to be very much on the ex- 
treine of this prudence. It saves itself by its ac- i 
tivity. It takes bank-notes — good, bad, clean, | 
ragged, and saves itself by the speed with which 
it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer 
sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fash- 
ion, nor money-stocks depreciate, in the few swift 



PRUDENCE. ' 37 

moments which the Yankee suffers any one of them 
to remain in his possession. In skating over thin 
ice, our safety is in our speed. 

Let him learn a prudence of a higher strain. 
Let him learn that everything in nature, even 
motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, 
and that what he sows, he reaps. By diligence 
and self-command, let him put the bread he eats at 
his own disposal, and not at that of others, that 
he may not stand in bitter and false relations to 
other men ; for the best good of wealth is free- 
dom. Let him practice the minor virtues. How 
much of human life is lost in waiting ! Let him 
not make his fellow-creatures wait. How many 
words and promises are promises of conversation ! 
Let his be words of fate. When he sees a folded 
and sealed scrap of paper float round the globe in 
a pine ship, and come safe to the eye for which it 
was written, amidst a swarming population; let 
him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his 
being across all these distracting forces, and keep 
a slender human word among the storms, dis- 
tances, and accidents, that drive us hither and 
thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force 
of one man reappear to redeem its pledge, after 
months and years, in the most distant climates. 

We must not try to write the laws of any one 
virtue, looking at that only. Human nature loves 
no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The pru- 
dence which secures an outward well-being, is not 
to be studied by one set of men, whilst heroism 
and holiness are studied by another, but they are 

14 



38 PRUDENCE, 

reconcilable. Prudence concerns the present time, 
persons, property, and existing forms. But as 
every fact hath its roots in the soul, and if the 
soul were changed, would cease to be, or would 
become some other thing, therefore, the proper ad- 
ministration of outward things will always rest on 
a just apprehension of their cause and origin, that 
is, the good man will be the wise man, and the 
single-hearted, the politic man. Every violation 
of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, 
but is a stab at the health of human society. On 
the most profitable lie, the course of events pres- 
ently lays a destructive tax ; whilst frankness i 
proves to be the best tactics, for it invites frank- I 
ness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and 
makes their business a friendship. Trust men, 
and they will be true to you ; treat them greatly, 
and they will show themselves great, though they 
make an exception in your favor to all their rules 
of trade. 

So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable 
things, prudence does not consist in evasion, or in 
flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk in 
the most peaceful parts of life with any sincerity, 
must screw himself up to resolution. Let him 
front the object of his worst apprehension, and 
his stoutness will commonly make his fear ground- 
less. The Latin proverb says, that "in battles, 
the eye is first overcome." The eye is daunted, 
and greatly exaggerates the perils of the hour. 
Entire self-possession may make a battle very little 
more dangerous to life than a match at foils or at 



PRUDENCE, 39 

foot-ball. Examples are cited by soldiers, of men 
who have seen the cannon pointed, and the fire 
given to it, and who have stepped aside from the 
path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are 
chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The 
drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health 
renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under the 
sleet, as under the sun of June. 

In the occurrence of unpleasant things among 
neighbors, fear comes readily to heart, and magni- 
fies the consequence of the other party ; but it is 
a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak, 
and apparently strong. To himself, he seems 
weak ; to others, formidable. You are afraid of 
Grim ; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are 
solicitous of the good will of the meanest person, 
uneasy at his ill will. But the sturdiest offender 
of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip 
up hh claims, is as thin and timid as any ; and the 
peace of society is often kept, because, as children 
say, one is afraid, and the other dares not. Far 
off, men swell, bully, and threaten ; bring them 
hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk. 

It is a proverb, that " courtesy costs nothing ; " 
but calculation might come to value love for its 
profit. Love is fabled to be blind ; but kindness 
is necessary to perception ; love is not a hood, but 
an eye-water. If you meet a sectary, or a hostile 
partisan, never recognize the dividing lines ; but 
meet on what common ground remains, — if only 
that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both, — 
the area will widen very fast, and ere you know 



40 PRUDENCE, 

it, the boundary mountains, on which the eye had 
fastened, have melted into air. If he set out to 
contend, almost St. Paul will lie, almost St. John 
will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical peo- 
ple, an argument on religion will make of the pure 
and chosen souls. Shuffle they will, and crow, 
crook, and hide, feign to confess here, only that 
they may brag and conquer there, and not a 
thought has enriched either party, and not an 
emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither 
should you j^ut yourself in a false position to j^our 
contemporaiies, by indulging a vein of hostility 
and bitterness. Though your views are in straight 
antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of senti- 
ment, assume that you are saying precisely that 
which all think, and in the flow of wit and love, 
roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not 
the infirmity of a doubt. So at least shall you get 
an adequate deliverance. The natural motions of 
the soul are so much better than the voluntary 
ones, that you will never do yourself justice in 
dispute. The thought is not then taken hold of 
b}^ the right handle, does not show itself propor- 
tionate, and in its true bearings, but bears ex- 
torted, hoarse, and half witness. But assume a 
consent, and it shall presently be granted, since, 
really, and underneath all their external diversi-i 
ties, all men are of one heart and mind. i| 

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man 
or men, on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sym- 
pathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited 
for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. 



PRUDENCE. 41 

But whence and when ? To-morrow will be like 
to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing 
to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off 
from us. Scarcely can we say we see new men, 
new women, approaching us. We are too old to 
regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any 
greater, or more powerful. Let us suck the sweet- 
ness of those affections and consuetudes that grow 
near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet. 
Undoubtedly, we can easily pick faults in our com- 
pany, can easily whisper names prouder, and that 
tickle the fancy more. Every man's imagination 
hath its friends ; and pleasant would life be with 
such companions. But, if you cannot have them 
on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If 
not the Deity, but our ambition hews and shapes 
the new relations, their virtue escapes, as straw- 
berries lose their flavor in garden-beds. 

Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, 
and all the virtues range themselves on the side of 
prudence, or the art of securing a present well-be- 
ing. I do not know if all matter will be found to 
be made of one element, as oxygen or hydrogen, 
at last, but the world of manners and actions is 
wrought of one stuff, and begin where we will, we 
are pretty sure in a short space, to be mumbling 
our ten commandments. 






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